Faced with financial difficulties, notably due to the outbreak of the price of paper and the fall in advertising revenue, “the new Caledonian” will only be disseminated in digital version.
Le Monde with AFP
Caledonian readers will have to say goodbye to their only local daily newspaper in paper version. From the 1 er January 2023, the new Caledonian will indeed be disseminated in digital version, the title management said to its employees.
Bought in 2013 by a trio of local shareholders to the Hersant group, the newspaper is faced with “a constant drop in the draw, double the price of paper and with a collapse of the advertising market”, explained to the agency France-Presse Yves Delauw, Managing Director of the Melchior group, owner of the New Caledonian.
A weekly publication should see the light of day
In safeguard procedure since April 2021, the daily will therefore be available in digital version from Monday to Friday. “However, we will expand our offer from an ambitious weekly magazine which will be delivered every week in the mailbox of our subscribers and in most of our current outlets,” said Mr. Delauw.
The title had launched steps in recent months to find investors in the territory or in mainland France, steps that have remained in vain, despite the support of the Ministry of Finance.
This new strategy, whose editorial staff was informed last week, will lead to the closure of one of the two printing works of the Melchior group, which also has a radio, a free title, magazines and which employs around 145 people. According to New Caledonia the 1 era , only five of the twenty-two employees of the rotary will be reclassified.
Founded in 1971, the new Caledonian had been bought in 1987 by former press boss Robert Hersant.